About
About the Newsletter
The Words Around Us is the official author newsletter of New York Times bestselling author Nova Ren Suma. For more about what this place is meant to be, read this introduction.
Subscriptions
Consider subscribing with an always free Reader membership!
Writer Memberships are for writers of all mediums, genres, and intended audience. You'll get access to all premium content—with craft-focused posts about writing, a monthly writing prompt, and an opportunity to attend a seasonal prompt-writing hour in Zoom. The first prompt is called "Trust the Universe" and can be found here.
*If you do try to subscribe and do not receive an immediate confirmation email from The Words Around Us <novaren@ghost.io> and it's not in your spam folder, unfortunately your host may be blocking all emails from the "ghost.io" domain. Please just try a different email address!
Questions? Email nova@novaren.com.
Post Schedule
Free monthly posts on the full moon are for all subscribers and include news announcements and updates about Wake the Wild Creatures. Upcoming newsletters will be published on September 17, October 17, November 15, and December 15.
Writing prompts come out on the first of the month, for those signed up for a Writer Membership. The next prompt will be published on October 1. The first prompt is called "Trust the Universe" and can be found here.
Craft posts about writing are for those signed up for a Writer Membership, and will usually be scheduled for a weekday during the last week of the month. The next one is coming on October 24.
About the Author
Nova Ren Suma is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling and #1 Indie Next Pick The Walls Around Us as well as A Room Away from the Wolves, both finalists for an Edgar Award for Best Young Adult Novel, among other acclaimed novels. She was co-editor with Emily X.R. Pan of the story & craft anthology FORESHADOW: Stories to Celebrate the Magic of Reading & Writing YA, which was the print edition of their online short story project foreshadowYA.com. Nova's own short fiction has appeared in various anthologies, including most recently the YA horror collection edited by Alex Brown, The House Where Death Lives, which came out in August.
Nova is a MacDowell fellow, a Yaddo fellow, and has taught creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania, Vermont College of Fine Arts, and Columbia University. She has led workshops and novel retreats at various venues around the country and online, including the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Highlights Foundation, Tin House, and 24PearlStreet, the online writing program of Fine Arts Work Center. She grew up in the Hudson Valley, spent most of her adult life in New York City, and now lives in Philadelphia.
Her new novel, Wake the Wild Creatures, is forthcoming from Little, Brown on May 6, 2025.
For more about Nova, visit her author website novaren.com.
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Photo credits: Author photo in header by Alison Cherry. Header photo by Brad Mann. All credited photos featured in posts courtesy of Unsplash.